While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you’ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic.

Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals.

However, you won’t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you’ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that.

To answer another question - boxed versions of the game will include the client on DVD(s).

what makes you think they gonna magically start to offer as many sales and deals on origin knowing well that those games are not offered anywhere else? IN fact they can even charge more than before.

How about a basic understanding of economics? You're acting like they are going to have a monopoly product, but that's not the relevant bit, even if it were true. EA may be the only one to digitally distribute their products (and barring SWTOR, we are only speculating that that will happen), but their products are in competition with all the other games out there. If EA were to say "Ha ha, you have to buy our games at Origin, so we are going to charge $100 for them all!", people would simply stop buying EA games, and buy the games of companies that were charging less.

In other words, EA is in competition for finite entertainment dollars. If people don't spend them on EA products, they will spend them on other products. So it is in EA's best interests to entice people to spend them on EA products. That is almost certain to include sales and discounts, because those are good ways to entice people to spend money.